VS Wiki:Beginner's Guide
Welcome to the fucking n00b Beginner's guide to being a wikian. This contains advice on what to do and how to do it. Civility Civility is maintained through strict desocialization, re-education and obedience programs, and reinforced with two primary rules: :1. Treat others the way you would want to be treated. Behind every username and IP is a person or intelligent monkey. With edits, assume that they were in good faith, except in obvious situations where a person is a blatant vandal, spammer, or dick (see below). Everybody has a different sense of humor. Insulting or having a generally belligerent attitude towards users who you may disagree with is nonconstructive and likely to create unnecessary flamewars, so it is recommended that you maintain a consistent level of civility with other users to create a more friendly and accepting community. :2. Don't be a dick. Adopted from Wikimedia, this one is on the basis of common sense in social settings. Behavior that would label you as a "dick" should be fairly obvious. The best way to know if your behavior is unacceptable and that of a "dick" is if somebody calls you a dick, or you appear to be blocked for being a dick. In both of the instances, it would be suggested that you correct your behavior (as in, do the opposite of what you were doing before). Additionally, vandals, spammers, blankers, and those who repeatedly violate the rules are all dicks. Don't be one. In Soviet Russia, dicks don't want to be YOU! Be italic This is our equivalent of WP's be bold policy. Simply, if there's a way that you can help (uploading images, doing fights etc.), just do it. If it's bad, it can be easily reverted, and that's less problematic than flamewars. Redirects Redirects are good ways to disambiguate the existence of pages, and prevent multiple entries for the same entity from being created. However, please redirect with great discretion. Certain iterations are adequate for this purpose. Consider the following: :Original Article: Flying Spaghetti Monster ::Suitable Redirects: These Redirects are useful for quick access to long titles, and to prevent ambiguities and the creation of pages with minor difference between titles (i.e. Caps, etc.) This serves to keep people from making errors and causing conflicts between pages. :::Examples: "FSM," "flying spaghetti monster" ::Unnecessary Redirects: These redirects, while potentially useful, are better formatted in another way, as the addition of another page clutters up the Uncyc. If an article is already properly capitalized (First word caps, others lowercase, e.g. "Left-handed monkey") there is no need to generate a fully captialized version, nor is there a need to generate every iteration of a capitalization. :::Examples: "His Noodlyness," "The Flying Spaghetti Monster," "Flying Spaghetti monster," "Flying spaghetti Monster,'' Any Frivolous Pluralization (i.e., "Clintons"), or prefix/suffix addition (i.e., "Cloned"). ::Stupid Redirects: These redirects are typically sad attempts at humor, and often do nothing but clutter the Uncyc and add little or no significant humor value. :::Examples: "Floating Fusilli Beast," "Alexander Hamilton," Jimmy (i.e. The kid next door) Links There are two primary ways to change link text such that it will lead to the article you want it to get to without having to generate a redirect page. *'Simple Changes': These are done when you want to add letters to the beginning or end of a link, including pluralizations and tense changes. :*'Example:' A link to the South Korea article for the words "South Koreans" can be obtained as follows: South Koreans :*'Example:' A link to the Kitten article for the word "Kittens" can be obtained as follows: Kittens *'Complex changes' Manual changes of link text to articles must be done as follows: Link text here :*'Example:' So making a link to The Fonz appear as "Fonzes" is achieved by typing: Fonzes Simply put, be practical when redirecting pages. If you can make a link manually, it's often better than making an unnecessary redirect page. Administrators For the most part, the administrators here are friendly and will help you out if you ask nicely. Administrators, commonly abbreviated as admins and also called sysops (system operators), are the elite editors who have access to technical features that help with maintenance such as banning users and deleting articles that fail.See here for further information. If your article is deleted If this happens, do not freak out, call your attorney, file lawsuits, create a militia, and start calling the admin names. Instead, take the following steps: #'Breathe'. Oxygen...good! Fire...bad! #'Search' the Deletion Log. (Hint - put the name of the deleted page in the "Title" field and hit "Submit Query".) See who deleted your page and read why. #'Contact' the admin by posting a nice, calm message on their talk page. If he or she has not already indicated a reason for the deletion/removal, request one. #'Wait' for the admin to reply. We know it's hard. Try hitting the link to the far left a bunch of times. They aren't all nuclear powered robots, so give the admin a day or two. #'Read' the reply. If it's wholly unreasonable, you may proceed to the Forum, where you can discuss it with everyone. If the admin thinks you gave a good enough reason, he or she will most likely restore your work. In this case, continue at leisure. Please understand that if a page looks like it's bad, some admins prefer to destroy on sight due to war trauma or excessive blunt head trauma. If the admin does not respond, do not feel free to retroactively restore your work. He or she may have had something to take care of. This is tantamount to doing a really big no-no. If days pass without a response, consult another admin. Admin rights, privileges, and responsibilities Administrators are entitled to a certain degree of rights, privileges, and responsibilities which exceed those of normal users. Sometimes, non-admin users may feel that administrators are abusing their powers. *'Administrators have the right to ban users for any offense outside of the scope of the rules and/or within them'. Because the rules don't cover all unwanted behavior, administrators will sometimes have to use their own judgment. See here for a list of offenses that may warrant a ban. *Despite popular belief, administrators are not infallible. Administrators make mistakes. Users have the right to question the decisions of administrators, and administrators have the right to ban users for questioning their authority.That last bit was a joke. *'Administrators are vital to the maintaining of the wiki and its quality'. Users are, however, equally important in their own way. Without administrators, we would erupt into anarchy and users would die off. Without users, administrators would have nobody to ban. Because of this cycle of reliability, users and administrators should respect one another and be civil. *'Administrators should not (usually) unban users who they did not ban'. Sometimes a user will be banned, then plead their case in the IRC to another administrator, who will then unban them. This can cause resentment between admins, or even a "wheel war". If at all possible, users should discuss matters with the administrator who banned them. *'Administrators have the right to joke-ban.' For those who don't know, a joke-ban is a ban that is a joke, and not the result of a user having violated the rules. Joke bans are usually a matter of minutes rather than days or weeks. They are not a big deal. *'Administrators should make no decision without reasonable justification'. This justification might be shown on a talk page or edit/ban summary, or you might have to ask them for it. *'Administrators are not above the rulesThis is applicable to ''all users., even though they enforce them'. Though there are probably no administrators who believe they are (as they wouldn't be an administrator in the first place if they did), it's still worth mentioning. Communication '''Communication' is vital. Most of the problems between users stem from misunderstandings or a lack of communication. Consider these tips when posting: How To Contact Others Please communicate with users through talk pages, the chatroom (the one that we use is at #wikia-gonetoosoon), or with the entire community through the Forum:Village Dump. Spamming crap on the Village Dump will get you into trouble, so make it count. If there's a technical problem with the website use the report a problem tab at the top of pages. When finishing fights Worried that an admin might nuke your page? Let us know in the edit summary. Need someone else to help you? Let us know on the talk page by starting a topic in the Village Dump. Communicating with the admins and other users as to your intentions will let us know that you're not an Evil IP of Doom (i.e. blanking, spamming, crap, and/or other vandalism). These comments will appear in ; pay attention to this page too, as admin comments will often appear here. If you don't tell us anything, don't be upset if we destroy a page because it only has a few lines. Note that communication will only get you so far. If you tell us you're gonna finish an article, do it sometime soon. Tag your trash with QVFD In a moment of brilliance, you may have conceived of what could be "The Best Fight Ever", only to find that after the first paragraph, you're running on vapor and the engine is starting to sputter. List it on QVFD and let us know that it needs to go down in a blaze of glory, rather than blank it. It sets off alarms that hurt our delicate, juicy admin brains. Flamewars Edit wars, revert wars, flamewars, and general rampant insults are strongly discouraged. Nobody likes drama or being insulted. Hostile disagreements should not erupt so long as users abide by our policies on consensus, civility, and employ common sense. When disagreements present themselves, it's best to be open, calm about the situation, and listen, even if the other user is acting like a total jackass. If nothing seems to work, contact an administrator on the issue or note it at our Complaints Department. You should not resort to personal attacks or other unacceptable behavior (such as blanking their userpage) when disagreements arise. When an administrator intervenes, keep in mind that what the administrator(s) say or do about the situation is final. Hopefully, flamewars are resolved with compromise and administrators employ neutrality in the situation. However, this doesn't always happen. If it doesn't, and you don't get your way, don't make a fuss about it. Move on. No lip While you may be a brilliant writer, having contributed several cleanly written fightss, your contributions do not excuse your conduct. If you have beef with an admin (i.e. the deletion of your tasty new page, or rollback of freshly grated additions), take it up with the admin on his or her talk page, through the chat (#wikia-gonetoosoon), or in the Forum:Village Dump. Do not use Edit Summaries to editorialize, or create pages solely for the purpose of flaming an admin. Bear the following in mind when grilling an administrator: *Do not editorialize on how this site should be run, nor how much of a failure an admin is. Personal attacks and irrelevant criticism are not appropriate. *Most of our admins are silly, don't be offended if they're less than formal with you. *Don't make it political. We don't want to mince words with you about how much you hate Liberals/Conservatives/Terri Schiavo/Kittens. If the admin you're dealing with happens to hold a certain philosophy, don't go about making a spectacle of it. It's irrelevant. *Don't beg/whine/offer your family (exception for last in cases of extreme gratitude). If an admin says "No", it means no. This behavior does absolutely nothing to garner sympathy, and serves only to irritate the admin you're addressing. Honest sincerity is your best policy. *Most importantly, posting is a privilege, not a right. *Lastly, and truly most importantly: *Do give the admins pie. Notes